Wednesday 3 December 2014

Tokens and gifts

I've been wondering a while what I could give out as tokens. I wanted something handmade, something that reflected something of myself, but something that was still easy enough to turn out. Inspired by tokens I'd seen through the year, I settled on hand made soap and wash cloths.
 
The pattern for the wash cloths I found as a free pattern on Ravelry, and made up six from a single ball of DK cotton yarn.Then I was delighted to have an excuse to get my soap making supplies out, given that it's been so long since I've made any. My first batch didn't turn out so well. I tried making a chamomile soap, but I used the wrong oil in my calculations and ended up with a lye heavy batch. I managed to save this by rebatching, but rebatched soap never turns out as pretty, so I'm hesitant to give this away as gifts.

 

For my second (and third) attempts, I picked up some silicon molds so I could make up pretty hand sized soaps. I made up two 500g batches this time, a rose scented goats milk soap in rose shaped molds, and then an almond milk soap with almond scent and ground almonds for added scrubbiness, made up in star shaped molds.
 

So that's twenty-four soaps and several wash cloths still to be made up. With a few given away already, that'll keep me going until I get indecisve about my tokens again.